The Neolithic of Britain and Ireland

Vicki Cummings

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317514268
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Arqueología

The Neolithic of Britain and Ireland provides a synthesis of this dynamic period of prehistory from the end of the Mesolithic through to the early Beaker period. Drawing on new excavations and the application of new scientific approaches to data from this period, this book considers both life and death in the Neolithic. It offers a clear and concise introduction to this period but with an emphasis on the wider and on-going research questions. It is an important text for students new to the study of this period of prehistory as well as acting as a reference for students and scholars already researching this area.

The book begins by considering the Mesolithic prelude, specifically the millennium prior to the start of the Neolithic in Britain and Ireland. It then goes on to consider what life was like for people at the time, alongside the monumental record and how people treated the dead. This is presented chronologically, with separate chapters on the early Neolithic, middle Neolithic, late Neolithic and early Beaker periods. Finally it considers future research priorities for the study of the Neolithic.

p.1

CHAPTER 1

Introducing the Neolithic of Britain and Ireland

INTRODUCTION

The Neolithic of Britain and Ireland covers the period from approximately 4000 bc to 2500 bc, around 1,500 years, or 60 generations. It is the first time that people in these islands kept domesticated cattle, sheep and pigs and grew cereals. It is also the period when people first start making pottery and building large monuments from stone, timber and earth. It was a time that saw significant clearance of woodlands, and the permanent utilisation of landscapes from the southern tip of Cornwall right up to the Shetland Islands, from Co. Cork up to Rathlin Island. People were agriculturalists, but they had not yet started using metals. Even so, Neolithic people were highly skilled as some material culture is exquisite, from beautifully polished stone axes through to carved stone balls and maceheads. Moreover, Neolithic monuments are architecturally sophisticated, quite extraordinary in their use of enormous stones, clearly indicating a massive investment of time and energy. This introductory chapter considers the landscapes of Britain and Ireland and how these would have influenced the nature of the Neolithic throughout these islands.

THE PERSONALITY OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND

In 1932 Cyril Fox published The Personality of Britain, a book which considered how land and environment influenced people living in the past. A few decades later Estyn Evans (1973) wrote The Personality of Ireland which examined the landscapes of Ireland in the shaping of the use of this island. These books are important because they highlight the role that the landscape plays in relation to various aspects of people’s lives. For example, looking after domesticated cattle and growing cereals is fundamentally affected by the region of Britain or Ireland in which you live. But these books were not simply environmentally deterministic: they both argue that the landscape is more than just a backdrop to how you make a living. Instead, the character of Britain and Ireland would have been a fundamental part of people’s identity, tied up with stories, with family and kin, with belief systems and myths and legends (see Bender 1993; Ingold 2000; Tilley 1994; Ucko and Layton 1998).

p.2

FIGURE 1.1

Rock outcrops (left) in a field that has seen extensive clearance in Pembrokeshire, Wales

p.3

FIGURE 1.2

The dramatic mountain of Benbulbin, Co. Sligo, Ireland

The first thing to note is that the landscapes of Britain and Ireland are very diverse: the west coast of Ireland often feels the full force of the Atlantic, in contrast with the east of Britain, sheltered from the rain and the wind by the Pennines but as a result often much cooler than the west. The south-east corner of Britain is frequently influenced by warmer continental weather, whereas the north coast of Scotland can be battered by storms from the north. The weather of course influences where people want to live and how easy it is to make a living, but there is considerable variation in topography too. The marks of glacial action can still be clearly seen in the landscape, from the distinctive drumlins in the Irish midlands to the dramatic glens of Scotland. There are high mountains, not on the scale of the Alps, but sizeable enough to completely transform the surrounding area. The spectacular Mourne Mountains in north-east Ireland dominate the landscape for kilometres around, and movement around Britain is affected by the Grampian and Cambrian mountains in particular. There are also areas of extensive lowlands, such as the Fens. Indeed, the differences in topography were significant enough for Fox (1932) to suggest that Britain could be divided up into two, quite different zones: the highlands and lowlands. While cereal agriculture and the keeping of domestic animals are the easiest in the lowland zone, it would be quite wrong to think that people in the Neolithic were only interested in these areas. Upland areas were most notably used for the extraction of stone for axes (see Chapter 4) and monumental constructions (see Chapters 5, 6 and 8) and seem to have been a draw to people for religious reasons.

Particular landscapes would also have been imbued with meanings: this tradition is well recorded in Irish mythology as discussed by Evans (1973) where stories tell of how features were formed in relation to great heroes or important events. This demonstrates not only the depth of knowledge that people had of their local landscape but how significant those landscapes were for understanding their place in the world. Of course, while we can never know the exact stories told about landscapes in the Neolithic, we can find material remains that indicate the potential significance of particular features and create stories ourselves of how these might have been important. And in the often densely forested landscape, the coast and sea might have been more intensively occupied than inland areas, particularly because from these areas it was easier to move around. Indeed, the maritime nature of the Neolithic appears to be one of its defining characteristics, not just in terms of the start of the Neolithic, but throughout this period. Waterways and rivers, as well as the sea, would have been conduits for movement and keeping in touch with other people (Cummings 2009; Cummings and Robinson 2015; Garrow and Sturt 2011).

p.4

FIGURE 1.3

A coastal landscape: views from the Isle of Yell, Shetland, Scotland

p.5

FIGURE 1.4

The Cumbrian fells, England. This landscape has been significantly altered by people, and is carefully maintained

The landscapes of Britain and Ireland today are, in many cases, quite different from the landscapes of the Neolithic. Both Britain and Ireland have seen intensive occupation and agriculture for thousands of years, as well as several hundred years of industrialisation in many areas. This does not just relate to the presence of towns and cities, but the drainage and reclamation of vast swathes of landscape that were previously marginal. Woodland was once ubiquitous but has been systematically removed. Fields have been created, patiently cleared of stone, ploughed, and enclosed by walls or hedges. Quarries and mines have altered entire landscapes in the quest for stone, coal, iron and other precious resources. Not all changes are the result of human action. Much of the upland peats were formed after the Neolithic, and coastal erosion has seen the loss of significant landmasses, particularly in the south of Britain and Ireland but also in island chains (e.g. the Scilly Isles and Orkney). Quite simply, the landscapes of modern Britain and Ireland are radically different from those of the Neolithic.

It is also worth briefly considering both the size and scale of Britain and Ireland. On a world scale, these are small land masses, but prior to the transport infrastructure of roads, rail and canal, and before any form of assistance with travel across land – not even horses were present in Britain and Ireland in the Neolithic – it would have taken time and effort to move around Britain and Ireland. It seems highly unlikely that people in Britain and Ireland would have comprehended, as we do, their location within these islands. However, we should not think that people lived only in one small part of Britain or Ireland with no understanding of the world beyond them. As we will see throughout this book there is plenty of evidence to suggest people had an awareness of distant places. Certainly people appear to have been aware of other parts of Britain and Ireland and communities living in them, and there are hints throughout the Neolithic that those networks extended to mainland Europe, specifically the Low Countries and along the Atlantic façade. There might have been knowledge of other places too, perhaps as far as the Alps to the south and Scandinavia to the east. There is also tantalising evidence that individuals were moving around, predominately within Britain and Ireland but sometimes beyond. These wider connections are difficult to definitively demonstrate, but kinship ties, exchange networks and the lure of knowledge and gossip must have been powerful motivators for people to be in touch, even when it might have involved a risky sea crossing (Callaghan and Scarre 2009).

p.6

FIGURE 1.5

A landscape of lochs and heather: North Uist, Scotland

There would have been differences in environment too between now and the Neolithic. The summer temperatures would have been, on average, a few degrees warmer and those in winter a few degrees cooler. After a period of sustained land loss due to rising sea levels, the Neolithic sea levels would have been, more or less and with a few notable exceptions, much as they are today (see Sturt et al. 2013). As already noted, one of the biggest differences between now and the Neolithic was in terms of vegetation, as most of Britain and Ireland was wooded at the start of the Neolithic. The focus of this book will not be the environment, although here it has been stressed that it would have played an important role in people’s lives. Instead the focus will be on archaeological remains and what those can tell us about the lives of people at the time.

SOME ASSUMPTIONS

It is worth highlighting at this point that there are a number of assumptions in the study of the Neolithic, some of which are not helpful when considering this period. A number of these assumptions stem back to early studies of this period, in particular two of the most influential early scholars of the Neolithic, Gordon Childe and Stuart Piggott. They were working with a much smaller data set than we have today: above-ground remains were often known about but the big surveys of monuments, for example, took place after they were writing (e.g. Corcoran 1969a; de Valera 1960; Henshall 1972). Moreover, many of the sites below ground, discovered by aerial photography or geophysics, were not known about when they were writing. They were also considering the Neolithic period before there was a good understanding of the chronology of prehistory, which came about with the advent of radiocarbon dating in the 1970s (see Renfrew 1976). For Childe and Piggott, the Neolithic had a much shorter chronology, and events that we now know were spread out over 1,500 years were fitted into 500 years in their work. It is no surprise, therefore, that they considered the Neolithic to be a significant and sudden change from what came before. For them, the advent of agriculture would be swiftly accompanied by people settling down and building m...